A Rhetorical Study On Shifting Sense Of Audience In Uncle Tom's Cabin And Its Dramatic Adaptation

Even though Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best selling American novel in the 19th century, more Americans actually got to know the whole story through its stage productions instead of the novel. Whereas the novel influenced the educated and the literate in pre-Civil War America, it is its dramatic adaptations that shocked the American public in general into a realization of the evils of slavery. Among the stage adaptations in question, the one by George Aiken was the most faithful, successful and enduring.Considering the novel's unique role in the construction and popularization of the anti-slavery discourse before the American Civil War, and the heavy involvement of rhetoric in Aiken's adaptation of the novel for a different kind of audience, this paper attempts to make up for the above-mentioned deficiency in contemporary criticism of the novel/play by comparing the two versions of Uncle Tom's Cabin from a rhetorical point of view. Focusing on how different senses of audience respectively inform the novel and the play, the paper would probe into the rhetorical strategies and resources the novelist and the playwright had employed to manipulate their respective target audiences and to realize their motives.A rhetorical analysis of the two versions of Uncle, Tom's Cabin reveals that their unusual success is largely due to Stowe and Aiken's rhetorical competence. Further, we realize the significant importance of western rhetoric in literature and politics through this case study. Therefore, it is of great significance for us to know Western rhetoric, cultivate the competence of rhetoric and practice it consciously in real life in order to know the West better, to interact more effectively with it, and to improve our own communicative competence accordingly. Meanwhile we hope to provide a new perspective to literature study.